Organized crime in Germany: cocaine and cybercrime

According to the BKA, the damage caused by organized crime is rising to 2.7 billion euros. What the traffic light government is doing about it and what the problem is.

A rare police success. Cocaine seized by the Bavarian police Photo: Sven Hoppe, dpa

Berlin taz | It's about drug trafficking, cybercrime and arms smuggling – and huge sums of money. According to a new BKA federal situation report, organized crime caused damage of 2.7 billion euros last year, twice as much as the previous year. The majority of this was caused by a single cybercrime case, which was responsible for 1.5 billion euros. Nine years ago, the total amount of damage was 539 million euros. And the actual sums are probably much higher, the number of unreported cases is large.

BKA President Holger Münch and Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) presented the situation report in Berlin on Thursday. According to the report, 642 proceedings were conducted into organized crime last year, almost as many as in the previous year. 264 of these concerned drug trafficking, 111 economic crime. A long way behind were 62 proceedings into property crimes and 58 into human trafficking. A third of the proceedings involved money laundering activities: at least 166 million euros of illegal funds were invested in commercial goods or real estate – here too there is a large number of unreported cases. Most of the proceedings were conducted in North Rhine-Westphalia, followed by Lower Saxony, Bavaria and Berlin.

Investigations were carried out against 7,347 suspects, a third of whom were German. The proportion of non-German suspects rose by 10 percent. A tenth of the people investigated were stateless or their nationality could not yet be determined, for example in cases of cybercrime. The smallest group consisted of three members, the largest of 279 people.

Last year, the authorities managed to confiscate 83 million euros in assets from criminals. The previous year, the figure was 228 million euros. The BKA points out that many proceedings were still ongoing and the confiscations only took place at the end. In other cases, orders from the judiciary were missing or the criminals' money had already been used up or could not be found.

High propensity for violence in the milieu

The BKA also warns of the high propensity for violence in this milieu. Violence occurred in a good third of the cases. There were three murders and 11 attempted murders. Firearms were found in 318 cases.

Investigators are also faced with the challenge that the suspects use encrypted communication in 24 percent of the cases. In 2020, French security authorities had already succeeded in infiltrating and decrypting the internationally used, encrypted Encrochat service, which was also used by criminals. This resulted in 6,500 sanctions across Europe. Investigations were also carried out against 3,000 users based in Germany. However, whether the cracked chats can be used in German courts is still controversial today.

The international drug trade, especially cocaine, is of particular concern to the security authorities. Even though the total number of cases here has fallen by a tenth, this field continues to lead the statistics. Faeser met with ministers from Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain in Hamburg in May and announced an intensified fight against international drug trafficking. In the port of Hamburg alone, almost 34 tons of cocaine were seized in 2023 – four years earlier, the figure was 9.5 tons. The group decided to step up financial investigations and improve cooperation with South American states. Controls are also to be increased in European ports.

Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) is also planning a federal office to combat financial crime; he has already presented a draft law for this in autumn 2023. The Greens, however, criticise the lack of powers and are calling for the adoption of the so-called Asset Concealment Combating Act. This has not happened yet.